Pragmatism

PRAGMATISM. - A direction in contemporary philosophy, among the most fortunate and widespread, which has had vast and at times profound repercussions, not only in the field of philosophy proper, but also in that of science, pedagogy, psychology and even religion (v. the individual entries). It is not identified with the so-called "philosophy of action," but it is certainly one of the most significant aspects of the latter, which has others — for example, the doctrine of "moral certainty" of Ollé Laprune or the "integral realism" of Blondel (v.) — that are not reducible to pragmatism proper, just as modernism (v.) is not, even if in some representatives of the latter, for example Le Roy, the pragmatist influence is considerable. Apart from so-called religious pragmatism (for which v. MODERNISM) and other forms of "philosophy of action," for example that of Unamuno (v.), within pragmatism one can distinguish various currents: a) logical and epistemological pragmatism (Peirce, Vailati); b) empirical-spiritualistic pragmatism (James); c) humanistic pragmatism (Schiller); d) fictionalist pragmatism (Vaihinger); e) instrumentalist pragmatism (Dewey).

The founder of the first (and of pragmatism in general) can be considered the American scientist C. S. Peirce, whose essay How to make our ideas clear, of 1878, is like the manifesto of the new philosophy. For Peirce, the meaning of a conception consists in its practical consequences; that is, to see which universal notions are real, it suffices to apply the pragmatist criterion of considering what effects, having practical importance, the object of our conception has. "The meaning of every one of our assertions lies in the future and therefore the whole positive sense of our ideas resides in their practical consequences. When new ideas do not determine differences in the practical results of thought, they are merely various 'ways of saying the same thing.'"

The Italian pragmatists G. Vailati (v.) and M. Calderoni hark back to the method of pragmatism; the former especially wished to remain a logician, unlike James, who declared (A pluralistic universe, New York 1909, p. 214) that he "abandoned logic frankly, squarely, irrevocably." Vailati gives great importance to the study of the structure and development of language (v.) and to that of the nature of the functions it performs, convinced that to define terms precisely is to eliminate illusory contrasts and also the illusion of those who believe "they are saying something even when they say nothing" (Scritti, Florence 1911, p. 895 ff.). Therefore the best "methodical canon" for avoiding the equivocations of language and not using words devoid of meaning is "the one that advises determining the meaning of every abstract phrase or proposition by means of examining the consequences drawn from it and that of the applications made of it by those who utter it, regarding two phrases or propositions as equivalent, or as two ways of saying the same thing (Peirce), whenever they are used by those who adopt them as a means of reaching the same particular conclusions" (ibid., p. 702). For both Vailati and Calderoni the Peircean formula — the meaning of a conception consists in its practical consequences — is not to be understood in a utilitarian or subjectivistic sense. Pragmatism is "utilitarian" only "insofar as it leads to discarding a certain number of useless," that is, apparent, "questions" (ibid., p. 121). Its formula is nothing but an invitation to introduce "experimentalism not only into the solution but also into the choice of the questions to be treated; to pour into words, which are the object of our controversies, their practical and experimental content for the purpose of avoiding confusions and sophisms" (Calderoni, Scritti, I, Florence 1924, p. 217). Experience, for both Vailati and Calderoni, is not only a means of proof of assertions and theories, but above all a criterion of their meaning, that is, a criterion of choice and elimination of the questions provoked by the assertions themselves. For Mario M. Rossi, whose first phase of thought is pragmatist in inspiration, provision is already in itself not only a criterion of meaning but also of truth (Saggio sul rimorso, Turin 1933, p. 4).

The term pragmatism, used by Peirce, was taken up again, together with other theses, in 1898 by W. James (v.) in a speech at the University of California. But if, on the one hand, with James pragmatism becomes a movement of worldwide influence and importance, on the other it orients itself in an empirical-spiritualistic sense, which is no longer that of Peirce. "Radical empiricism" (as James called his philosophy) is quite different from the classical empiricism of the English tradition. The experience of which the American philosopher speaks is future experience, the test and verification of knowledge. Choosing means in view of an end is the characteristic proper to intelligent procedure, that which differentiates it from mechanical procedure, which chooses no means and pursues no ends: "to pursue future ends and to choose means for their attainment, this is the mark and criterion for affirming that mentality is present in a phenomenon" (The principles of psychology, I, New York 1890, p. 8). Therefore, volitional activity dominates rational and sensory activity: perception (v.) and thought (v.) exist only in view of conduct. Both science and philosophy are constructed in view of human ends, they serve (and this is the purpose of thought) action, so that man may operate effectively in the world. Hence James's defense of moral and religious "beliefs" (when they are of those that cannot be demonstrated true or false, and are "live" and "important") insofar as they are useful and necessary for effective action. They are accepted as true and therefore one runs the risk of being mistaken, but the risk is inevitable because even one who refuses to believe assumes that of the negative decision. It is fitting, then, to accept responsibility and risk, to take on the "may be," to choose, to will to believe (The will to believe is the title of a famous work by James). Thus James believes he is saving and guaranteeing moral and religious demands, giving his pragmatism as "will to believe" a spiritualistic character and founding on it his pluralistic conception of the universe, of which God is one of many beings, himself finite, existing in time, "creating his own history as we ourselves do" and in our midst (A pluralistic universe, New York 1909, p. 319). How such a God can satisfy the demands of the religious conscience and guarantee an order of truth in the human and physical world remains incomprehensible and hence an ineffective belief, that is, devoid even of pragmatist value.

It does not seem accurate to say that the Englishman F. C. S. Schiller, going back more faithfully than James to Peirce, brought pragmatism back within the boundaries of logic and epistemology; rather, it should be said that he understands logic in a manner very close to Jamesian pragmatism; and since he makes every thought or logical procedure arise from the needs, feelings, beliefs and passions of the human soul, his can be qualified as humanistic pragmatism, for which everything is conditioned by the demands of action or by practical need. In short, truth — and every truth — is relative to man. His critique of formal logic, which he considers a pure game of the intellect and a pleasant pastime (Formal logic, 2nd ed., London 1931, p. 388), and the reduction of any principle — that does not obey a practical interest — to a verbal proposition, drive Schiller to accept as the only valid criterion that of utility and to measure by it the degree of truth of the sciences, of mathematics, of philosophy, etc. In this sense, Schiller considers the ancient saying of Protagoras "man is the measure of all things" to be the greatest discovery of philosophy, without this having to justify the use of fictions, errors and lies, which can nevertheless be useful to someone. There is, according to Schiller, a kind of selective principle by which the individual, in the course of his life, tends to abandon certain initial interests and to choose others more consistent and more true. Social action operates upon this choice: of the various choices, always made on the basis of the evaluative principle of utility, only those survive which have a social utility and respond better to the aspirations of the greatest number of people in a determined historical condition. Schiller's humanistic pragmatism is a form of subjectivism (v.) and issues in a radical relativism (v.).

The two forms of pragmatism of James and Schiller influenced certain Italian writers, who from 1903 to 1907 gave life to the movement of Leonardo and above all G. Papini (closer to James) and G. Prezzolini (closer to Schiller). The review also had as contributors Vailati and Calderoni and in this way represented, in its best and least passionately polemical pages, the three forms of pragmatism of Peirce, James and Schiller, with open disagreements between Vailati-Calderoni on one side and Papini-Prezzolini on the other, the two writers who, at bottom, marked the physiognomy of the review and gave it a polemical character, more critical than constructive, of modernizing culture and philosophy. According to Papini, the fundamental character of pragmatism is the "hardening of theories and beliefs, that is, recognizing their pure instrumental value; saying that they hold, that is, only relatively to an end or an order of ends and that therefore they are susceptible of being changed, altered and transformed where necessary" (P., Florence 1927, p. 91).

James's pragmatism has found in Italy yet another original and philosophically elaborated affirmation in the "experimentalism" of A. Aliotta, on whose thought, however, having passed through various phases, other influences are to be noted. Humanistic pragmatism, on the other hand, had had its representatives in Italy, even before Schiller, in G. Cesca and P. R. Troiano: the former, moving from a strictly empiricist and phenomenalist point of view, limits to the external world, understood as phenomenon (v.), the beginning and the end of human activity, which, creating civilization, at the same time as it frees itself from the "illusion" of the Absolute (v.), creates the regnum hominis, the incessant product of the transforming action "of the external environment in conformity with human needs" (La filosofia dell'azione, Palermo 1908, p. 23); the latter, who although he does not want his "humanism" confused with pragmatism nor with voluntarism (v.), accepts at bottom the pragmatic principle of knowledge as a means by which to transform reality for our practical ends and the consequent utilitarianism (v.), which is realized in the state of "calm" (absence of pleasure and of pain) or of alipia (Le basi dell'umanesimo, Turin 1907, p. 150).

H. Vaihinger (v.) elaborates his own personal form of pragmatism under the direct influence of Kant (v.), of Lange (v.), of the empirio-criticism of Mach (v.) and of Avenarius (v.), as well as of Nietzsche (v.). Vaihinger too subordinates thought to action, but does not identify truth with utility: even contradictory and erroneous beliefs can be useful. Only pure experience is true, but man does not content himself with it and therefore creates for himself fictions (immortality of the soul, freedom, God, etc.), useful for practical life: they give him the "illusion" of satisfying his deepest needs. Vaihinger exasperates the Kantian agnosticism of the "ideas" of pure reason, to which every cognitive value is denied and only a regulative one is recognized. With one difference: for Kant man must act as if God existed, the soul were immortal, etc.; for Vaihinger these beliefs are "fictions" and man acts as if the fictions created by him were realities. According to this philosophy of the "as if" (Philosophie des Als-Ob is the title of Vaihinger's most significant work), fictions are neither truths nor hypotheses; to acquire an ever greater awareness of this is the progress of philosophy: to be conscious that fictions are fictions and nevertheless to use them equally for the purposes of life. A claim, at bottom, absurd, since a fiction or a myth or an illusion cannot have any attractive and stimulating force from the moment that they are recognized as such. The fiction as fiction has no cognitive value and not even a pragmatic one.

Before Vaihinger, but under a more direct influence of positivism (v.) and with closer adherence to the Kantian position, the Italian G. Marchesini had maintained that moral and religious ideals are not "fictions". Marchesini emphasizes their social importance: "Act as if what is socially true and is socially imposed as absolute, were true and absolute also for you" (Le finzioni dell'anima, Bari 1905, p. 197; the op. cit. of Vaihinger is from 1911). Marchesini attributes to fiction a psychological force of efficacy indispensable in moral conduct, but, more coherently than Vaihinger, he recognizes it only insofar as it is believed as if it were a truth to which a reality corresponds.

The "instrumentalism" (v.) of the American J. Dewey is the form of pragmatism most influential and discussed today. For Dewey too the starting point is experience, but primitive and integral experience, which is also error and perversity, ignorance and risk. Between nature and man there is a close indissoluble connection: man is part of nature and feels himself rooted in it, but he is that part which is destined to modify the structure of nature itself and to realize its meaning. Therefore ideas and thought in general are an instrument of organization of future experience and "reason has necessarily a constructive function" (Philosophy and civilisation, New York 1931, p. 25). To convince ourselves that error, evil, disorder, the irrational, death are realities (instead of deluding ourselves by calling them appearances) and to struggle to reduce their effects and limit their scope, this is the task of man and of human society, gradually (but never completely) realized by the active work of human intelligence, "valid within the limits of its success". Every theory or doctrine or mental construction is an effective way (when it is so), on the part of man, of transforming reality in order to guarantee himself the use and enjoyment of the goods that are necessary to him. Men think when they are stimulated by need and by restlessness, when they have perturbations to soothe, difficulties to overcome. "A life of rest, of success without effort, would be a life without thought" (Ricostruzione filosofica, Italian trans., Bari 1930, p. 138).

With Dewey, pragmatism reveals one of its most dangerous aspects: it is no longer merely a matter of subordinating thought to action, but: a) of eliminating every trace of spiritualism; b) of limiting the function of intelligence to its power to transform reality (and any reality whatsoever) and therefore of denying that there exist immutable essences or substances or principles; c) with the aim of satisfying man's needs and with them his stimulating anxieties, which are effective and efficacious when they can be satisfied within the sphere of the natural and historical order. Dewey's pragmatism does not differ greatly from the fundamental theses of Marx and of Marxism (v.); it is, one might say, the "American" form of the latter, but the consequences, from the moral, religious and philosophical point of view, are identical. This explains the sympathies that Dewey enjoys among certain European theorists or followers of Marxism. A grave observation, if one bears in mind that the United States of America, anti-Marxist in politics and economics, today regard Dewey as their official philosopher and national glory.

But the whole of pragmatism, apart from some contributions made to the problems of science, of language, of empirical and pedagogical psychology, and apart from the merit of an energetic recall to the sense of the concrete, is an orientation of thought that is dangerous, erroneous and philosophically null, worn away by an invincible internal contradiction: every moral, religious, scientific truth, etc. is provisional and contingent, and yet one must believe that it is true and necessary. Thus, on the one hand it is acknowledged that truth, if it is not believed to be such, loses all pragmatic value, and on the other hand that it is valid only for its pragmatic value. One of the two: either truth has efficacy in action only insofar as it is truth and is believed to be such, and in that case one comes to acknowledge that it is not accepted as true because of its practical consequences but insofar as it is believed and is truth; or one knows that a principle is not truth and one claims that, even while knowing this, it has practical efficacy, and then one is saying something senseless, insofar as a principle that one knows not to be true cannot exercise any stimulus or have any efficacy. Pragmatism thus comes to acknowledge that the pragmatic criterion has no value as a criterion of truth; and with this it denies itself.

In pragmatism there converge Kantian demands (stripped of their speculative significance), positivistic and empiricistic ones (but of a positivism and an empiricism now more critical and now more naive), besides others suggested by the theory of evolution (v.) in its various developments, by certain recent positions of the philosophy of science and by influences of scientific discoveries, of which an arbitrary and crude application is immediately made to philosophical problems; all of it channeled into support of the pragmatic dogma that the truth of a principle (v.) or of a cognitive process is given by its practical efficacy, that is, by success, which is tantamount to adopting the contingent and the empirical, the temporary or the relative, as the criterion of truth. This is a matter of the overturning of the classical criterion (v.) of truth, of the negation of philosophy (G. Papini, op. cit., p. 81 writes that pragmatism "rather than a philosophy, is a method for doing without philosophy"), of a form, at times exasperated, of making truth a kind of "democratic" candidate in a list of many presumed truths, awaiting the majority of votes in order to proclaim itself true or not true; and the outcome depends on the efficacy of the staging and the publicity. Pragmatism denies, at bottom, every truth and resolves itself into a form of empirical historicism and, ultimately, of authentic materialism (v.); and, when it calls itself religious and spiritualist, into a fideism (v.) no less ruinous, into a kind of mysticism of action and of the will, which, unsupported by a firm rational principle or by a well-founded concept of transcendence, orients itself toward the most radical immanentism (v.) and therefore toward a mysticism of man's transforming and operative efficacy, with a view to the establishment of a future society, ever more suited to satisfying his needs and to enjoying the goods of the world; that is, it meets with Marxism.

Michele Federico Sciacca